Posted
by
BeauHDon Monday August 22, 2016 @08:05PM
from the manbang-and-chill dept.

North Korea has unveiled a set-top box that offers video-on demand services similar to Netflix. The service is called Manbang, which translates to "everywhere" in Korean, and allows consumers to stream documentaries about Kim Jong Un and other "educational" programs, as well as five live TV channels. "If a viewer wants to watch, for instance, an animal movie and sends a request to the equipment, it will show the relevant video to the viewer [...] this is two-way communications," according to NK News. It reportedly works by plugging the set-top box into an internet modem, then connecting an HDMI cable from the cable box to the TV. A very small number of North Koreans will actually be able to use the device as "only a few thousand [...] have access to the state-sanctioned internet, in a nation of 25 million people," reports New York Daily News.

Well, on the same sort of theme, it is said that that the Labour leader in UK, Mr Corbyn, has a keen interest in manholes, This is not as unusual as it may sound - apparently this is quite common amongst the Tories, although Mr Corbin likes to point that his particular interest is in drain covers.

so on the topic of manatees they say every 35 lbs. overweight reduces effective penis length one inch (2.5 cm for every 16 kg). I'm thinking fearless leader might have a few in crater in that case, a kind of manatee mangina.

True story - Conan O'Brien was waffling on as he is prone to do, and made up an imaginary web site called hornymanatee.com. CBS had a policy of creating any web site mentioned on their shows, if it didn't already exist, to prevent someone else registering it and filling it with damaging content.

YOu at beiung shutting up now! FAERLESS LEADUR CAN DOANYTHING! He want be fat twink, he be bestest fat twink workd HAS ever seen! You Donalds Trump is not half fat twink Faerless leadur can ever be! KiM will wrestle him to mud, like fat greasy fat twink he is!

you american no tell us what faerlus leedur can do, that why world so hate on you. We all be fat twinks just to show you what powerful NK peoples can do. We show you, but good! Fat twin

There are many times when translating a word, then translating it back, won't result in the same word returned, but it would still be the "correct" middle translation. "in each and all places" sounds close enough to "everwhere" I can't see how that's an incorrect translation, even if a bit awkward. Though "universal" sounds a bit more like a "to everyone in all places", but universal would be a stupid name for a media company.

Chinese, Japanese and Korean seem to be the most common languages for translation failure based memes. I think a lot of people assume it's just them being "weird" or something, but it's usually the western translator screwing it up. Two much over-used examples:

Do not want: This was from the English subtitles on a Chinese bootleg copy of Star Wars III. Vader screams "noooooo", but there is no word for "no" in Chinese. You can say things like "do not [do that]" or "is not [that]", or "do not want [that]". So the Chinese translator correctly translated it into Chinese, retaining the original meaning (do not want my wife and child to be dead) but the machine translator that converted it back into English couldn't understand the context.

Lack of context is a really common problem when translating Chinese, and to a lesser extent Japanese. In Japanese, for example, newspaper headlines often come out as "I went to some event" or "I found a large data outflow on the dark web", because the machine assumes talking in the first person and the word for "leak" becomes "outflow" because it can be used in that sort of context. For reference better translations would be "Visiting some event" and "Huge data leak found on dark web".

Over 9000: This is from an episode of Dragon Ball Z. A character called Vegita can't believe that his opponent Goku's fighting power level is over 9000 points, when most humans are in the single digits. In the original it was actually "over 8000". 8000 has special meaning in Japanese, it's kinda like the English "zillion", not always intended as a precise number but rather just some really unbelievably large amount.

The way the episode presents it, Guku starts off with a low power level and builds it up slowly. Vegita is counting it up, over 5000, over 6000, 7000.... It's a joke, a sort of pun maybe. So interestingly the western translator got it wrong, kinda, because they re-worded it a bit to fit the mouth movements on-screen with English voices and somehow ended up at 9000 in the count, but it became a joke unintentionally anyway. By chance and the skill of the voice actor hamming it up, the untranslatable joke was substituted with another.

The Korean "man", which incidentally is actually pronounced with a long "a" to rhyme with the English word "on", is the same as 1,000 but can be translated as "infinite" in many situations. For example, a fountain pen is translated into Korean as a "1,000 year pen" or "man-youn-pil" (see here [wikipedia.org]).

The "bang", which is also pronounced with a long "a" to rhyme with the English word "on", means [en.bab.la] a "place" or a "room", as others here have noticed.

Thus this word (as with many Korean words) is a portmanteau [merriam-webster.com], in this

Infinite places does not mean everywhere. This is a common misconception when dealing with infinite sets.

Suppose you have infinite many places, as many as the natural numbers.You may have infinitely many places numbered by even numbers, while still not have the other, infinitely many, places with odd numbers.

So a more correct translation would be "in many places". But then again, if you are talking about infinite sets, the concept of "many" is also tricky, and leads into questions of set cardinality, ale

Infinite places does not mean everywhere. This is a common misconception when dealing with infinite sets.

Suppose you have infinite many places, as many as the natural numbers.You may have infinitely many places numbered by even numbers, while still not have the other, infinitely many, places with odd numbers.

So a more correct translation would be "in many places". But then again, if you are talking about infinite sets, the concept of "many" is also tricky, and leads into questions of set cardinality, aleph numbers, etc. which fortunately is a lot more interesting than the usual Netflix soap operas.

Uh, thanks Lars. Where would we be without iconoclastic pedantry on Slashdot?

Since we're being pedantic, you may wish to learn how to parse the phrase "loosely meaning".

1. Every place
2. A synonym for manguk (all the nations of the world)
3. In baduk (the game Go), what is said when you tally up the points and the difference is at least 91
4. A colloquial abbreviation short for "manhwa bang" (comic book store)

I refuse to support the N. Korean regime at any level. Any growth in their GDP will be redirected to their military. Purchasing the Manbang it tantamount to putting a down payment on a noose; one thread at a time.

I refuse to support the N. Korean regime at any level. Any growth in their GDP will be redirected to their military. Purchasing the Manbang it tantamount to putting a down payment on a noose; one thread at a time.

I refuse to support the N. Korean regime at any level. Any growth in their GDP will be redirected to their military. Purchasing the Manbang it tantamount to putting a down payment on a noose; one thread at a time.

Wow, that's quite the courageous stance! How do you deal with the pressure of all of the door-to-door Manbang/other North Korean imports salesmen these days?

North Korea works like a corporate intranet on steroids. There's an outwards facing internet presence (the ~15000 addresses) and then there's a national intranet [northkoreatech.org]. The two components are, for the most part, airgapped. If you're on the intranet side and want access to the internet, there are two options:

- If you're very well off or part of the elite, you use a separate computer.
- If you're not, but you're well enough off that you have intranet access, you can request material from the internet (usually re

Two way communication sounds just like another take on the Big Brother. Do they even need that?
Maybe the people are slowly getting conscious that there is a better world outside true Korea?
I hope someone hacks this system as soon as it goes live.

All gay jokes aside, I kind of think there might be an opportunity there for some high quality hackivism. I'm thinking that a skilled individual or group, who has access to some good North Korean translation could use this as an opportunity to post videos that give at least a few North Koreans a glimpse of what the rest of the world is like. The ideal video(s) would be subtle, things like going a wee bit over the top with praise for Brilliant Comrade Kim Jong Un or referring to the higher standard of living